AHEAD European Archive of Historical EArthquake DataEuropean Archive of Historical EArthquake Data

The 1703 Mw 6.9 seismic sequence (⁠I0 11 Mercalli–Cancani–Sieberg scale) was one of the most important crises ever occurred in Italy and has left a deep mark on the seismic history of cities and towns of central Italy. Abundant documents testify the damage suffered by the city of Rome during this sequence; however, the descriptions are mainly referred to monumental buildings. For the recent macroseismic practice, such edifices are not statistically representative when used for assessing macroseismic intensity; instead, the information about residential housing provides reliable data especially when using the European Macroseismic Scale 1998. In this work, we show that useful information regarding the ordinary residential stock can be retrieved in the bureaucratic documentation, apparently distant from the repertoires traditionally used for historical seismology studies. In particular, we used administrative acts granted by the government of Rome to authorize maintenance works on the external parts of the buildings, namely the “Lettere Patenti.” The scrutiny of these sources allowed us to enrich the available dataset introducing 93 new damage points found on civil building stock spread in the historic center of Rome. The new dataset contributes to better define the picture of the effects of the 1703 seismic sequence in Rome, which allowed us to assess macroseismic intensity with more confidence.

The Catalogue lists earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 461 B.C. and 1997, and earthquakes that occurred in the general Mediterranean area between the VIII century b.C. and the XV century. This version (CFTI5Med) features: the retrieval and formatting of over 23,000 original bibliographic documents, transcribed or printed, nearly 50% of those utilized in the CFTI5Med. These documents are now available on-line as fully searchable pdf files; a full geological reinterpretation, georeferencing and reprocessing of over 2,300 descriptions of earthquake-induced environmental effects, which are now all available and searchable in a user-friendly web-GIS environment; the elaboration of a number of texts and commentaries that were missing from the CFTI4Med version of the catalogue; a totally re-designed and more efficient web- and web-GIS interface. The new Catalogo dei Forti Terremoti in ltalia includes 1,259 earthquakes that occurred in Italy (98 of which are currently considered false). No commentaries on the main earthquake effects were available in the previous version of the catalogue for 87 of such events as they had not been updated with respect to the information supplied in Guidoboni e Comastri (2005) for the 1000 AD-1500 AD time interval. The commentaries concerning the most significant effects of Italian medieval earthquakes have now been elaborated and are available along with the information on more recent events. For the remainder of the earthquakes first presented with the CFTI4Med - those that occurred in the general Mediterranean area away from the Italian coasts - the new catalogue provides only the felt reports and basic epicentral parameters.